


Pyrite Boy

by Babydoll Ria (Babydoll_Ria)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 13:47:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1552613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Babydoll_Ria/pseuds/Babydoll%20Ria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finnick Odair has a plan to be The Golden Boy.</p><p>(Annie Cresta knows this isn't right, but she can pretend this is a fairy tale.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pyrite Boy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sabaceanbabe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabaceanbabe/gifts).



> Happy, happy, belatedly so late birthday!
> 
> I hope you enjoy, and I know you don't usually like AUs, so if you don't like this, I will write something canon compliant, and we can just laugh at how shit that is.
> 
> But thank you for being such a good friend I've made because of Hunger Games.

Finnick Odair is fourteen years old when he makes his plan the summer he moves from California to New England.

No one knows who he is, and so no one knows why he lives with his grandmother (teenage mother in and out of rehab, but finally O. and who the fuck actually knows who the father is?), so he can be cool in high school.

(Something that never happened in Niland, because his mother was a mess and no one wants to be friends with a boy who stares out the window daydreaming, spinning stories about why his Mom is hopped up on coke.)

And he knows how to be cool in high school.

One: Money.

He's from California, and in small town New England, California means money. He's been working really, really hard since finding out about the move in January to update his wardrobe from Wal-Mart to Holister, and Abercombie and Finch and American Apperal. He found a lot of classics, like a trench coat, and Burrberry scarves in Thrift Stores, and scowers online stores with prepaid credit cards to buy things from Europe online, so he can pretend he went there. He bagged groceries every day after school, from 3:30 to 9, and then taught the baby swim class at the Y, as well as pool maitence every weekend. Half of that money went to savings for college, the other half is going so he can buy a car and restore it so when he turns sixteen, he can drive.

Two: Image.

People are shallow. He doesn't bullshit about true beauty is on the inside, no one sees your insides. People see your outsides, and they judge you by that. He's the new kid in Oak Bluffs Masachuttestes, and there is only one high school (Martha's Vineyard Reginal High School) that has seven hundred students in total; people will talk, and he wants to be in control of what they'll talk about.

He's lucky enough to have good genetics, he's tall and gangly in middle school, but he's been swimming every morning before going to school, and he runs two miles every other day. He's get muscle mass, as well being pretty good looking, which only promises to get better as he ages.

He's not dark enough to be the bad boy, not that archetype. His hair is too blonde, with copper high lights, and he prefers a smirk over a sneer. He's not going for the class clown, no he wants to be the leader, the face. The one everyone wants his approval.

He wants the golden boy.

Three: Athletics.

Sports are power. There's a hiarchy, and those who have power are popular. Sports are popular. The problem with growing up poor is that sports need a lot of money, which he doesn't have. Which means he needs a sport that is cheap.

Like swimming.

There's a swim team at MVRH, and he will swim. He will make Captain when he is in grade twelve. He will go to States and he will get a swimming scholarship.

Who cares if swimming is lame? He'll make it the best sport in the school.

Four: Intellect.

No one likes an idiot. His grades will be impeccable, top of the class. But he won't act like a nerd. He won't brag about it either. He'll let his marks talk for themselves.

Five: Parties (and all of those things attached)

Where he grew up, he watched his mother cut lines of crack with a credit card next to his crayons. He can cut a line in his sleep. He's not worried about it. He's had beer bottles chucked at his head, and on his tenth birthday his mother's "boyfriend" gave him a six pack.

He can handle himself.

Six: Sex.

He doesn't look fourteen, but he is, and no fourteen year old girl is going to have sex, and no girl older than him will date a grade nine. So the sex thing has to wait. But a girlfriend, a girlfriend is good.

But the thing is, he doesn't want one at his school. He needs establish himself, and he can't be established as part of The Couple in grade nine. He needs to be seen as a singular, his girlfriend just an accessory.

So, little Annie Cresta, the girl who lives across the street, who likes ballet, Audrey Hepburn and science, who is only thirteen is his choice.

It's incredibly simple, Annie thinks it's love, and she kisses him on the cheek for all of June when they start going out, walking to the small movie theatre watching movies released three months ago. It's on their month anniversary, when she makes him spaghetti and hot dogs that she lets him kiss her on the mouth.

When September comes, the new Finnick Odair is ready.

(No one liked the daydreamer with a crack addict mom with a boyfriend who used him for a target practice with his empties.)

* * *

High School suits him,-he's from California, of course he's rich, handsome, smart, and athletic-and he easily falls into the popular crowd; Gloss Roberts, captain of the football team and student council president befriends him and it opens up the entire world.

He is  _the_  ninth grader.

He gets invited to all these parties, where he impresses with his beer pong skill, and his ability to make a pipe out of an apple.

Annie doesn't come to these parties, because she has a curfew. (He has one too, but Mags falls asleep at nine, so it's easy to sneak out).

He makes out with a lot of older girls, who know he has a girlfriend, but kissing isn't really cheating, and it's not like Annie makes out with him and well, it's all part of the plan,

He wins State in the two hundred metre butterfly, shocking everyone.

Grade nine is a good year.

(The Golden Boy burns his skin sometimes, and he catches himself writing poetry on the margins of his math homework.

Annie sees them, and things it's the best thing ever and makes him write it in sharpie all over her binders.)

* * *

The summer is spent teaching swimming lessons, and exploring with Annie.

She finds a really weird cookbook at a second hand book shop and they try to make all those recipies.

He's never watched Disney movies before, so every night they watch one in Annie's treehouse on her Dad's laptop.

The summer is good.

(He feels like The Golden Boy is like smoke, and he's unable to cling onto that persona over the summer, when he really only sees Annie.

Gloss is gone to university somewhere out of state, and his twin sister Cashmere avoids him after that one party.

Cashmere took Annie shopping a lot though. He's really scared Cashmere will tell Annie, because Annie will be heart broken and he doesn't know what he'll do if she cries.)

* * *

Annie comes to MVRH and she doesn't really know how to act. People look at her out of the corner of their eyes, and she wants to keep her head down and look at the tiles on the floor.

But that's not what Audrey Hepburn would do, so Annie keeps her head held high, clutches her (knock off she got from Ebay, because Finnick dresses so nicely, and she's his girlfriend, they've been dating for one whole year, and she's kissed him with tongue and he had his hands on her breasts-over the shirt but that's still so very grown up and none of her friends have ever done that) Louie Vuitton purse tighter and walks through the hallway through the grade nines and tens who part like the Red Sea for her.

She knows why they're staring, she's Finnick Odair's girlfriend.

She knew her boyfriend was popular, but she didn't realize how popular.

She knows what they're saying too; why her?

(She's kind of fat, because she's only five foot and 110 makes her look bloated, her hair is kinda long and she doesn't go anything cool with it, her eyeliner is always smudge because she can't wing it properly, and her nails are bitten, making all of those hard hours learning nail art useless.

She's not funny, and she's quite and she's rather slow with coming up with comebacks or witty retorts so she doesn't really win fights. She's just an average fourteen year old, and that's really hard to be, when your boyfriend is extraordinary.)

Annie starts joining him on his morning run, and she starts taking dance classes every day after school for two hours.

Finnick joins student council.

(He comes to all her dance showcases, and suggests a talent show as a fundraiser and makes Annie show everyone how beautiful she is when she dances.

The school is silent.

When she comes off stage, she's so nervous that he kisses and swings her around, and they can hear the thunderous applause.)

Finnick doesn't know how to skate, and Annie thinks it's the funniest thing in the world.

His rented skates are dull, and he can't get his balance, and he swerves and falls.

He looks adorable.

'What?' He complains, on the ice, while Annie laughs.

'I'm just glad.' She tells him. 'You suck at something.'

'You are not being a supportive girlfriend.' Finnick grumbles as she helps him up.

'But you love me anyway.'

'Kinda do.'

* * *

He's had a year to watch all the couples in high school interact, and he's decided how to set the tone for him and Annie.

They go to school together in the morning, (he's counting the days until he can drive them), on the bus with everyone who can't drive, but they take the early bus to head to Starbucks where she gets a latte and he gets a capicion and they walk lisuerinly to school, often with Annie telling him about the latest episode of  _Teen Wolf_  or  _The Vampire Diaries_ , and he'll tell her about whatever sports thing was on, and then they'll play a game like I Spy.

They hang out at his lockers, he walks her to class, kisses her goodbye and then gets to his own class. They text throughout the day, sometimes he eats lunch with her and her few friends; sometimes she eats with him.

Wednesdays at lunch he has student council meetings, and Annie joins the chemistry club, so she has meetings for that.

They both join the environmental club.

They meet when school ends, and she kisses him good bye, because he has swim practise and she has ballet.

Her parents change her curfew so she's allowed to stay out Friday night until midnight, so she goes to parties with him on Friday night, and drinks wine instead of coolers or beer.

By August, Annie has dropped ten pounds, and has learnt how to put her hair up in very elegant knots.

There is a prestige in being Finnick Odair's girlfriend, and she handles it like Audrey would.

She doesn't wear anything with a logo or slogan, she wears classic outfits that she and her mother tailor to fit her.

She doesn't have a tumblr, like all the other girls and she doesn't act like every other girl.

(It's so hard to listen into debates about Stiles and Derek or Stiles and Lydia and not being able to participate, because everyone knows that Derek and Stiles need to just have sex because of all the tension.)

She has to be Audrey to Finnick's James Dean, and when your boyfriend is extraordinary, you have to be different.

She reads classics she finds at second hand book stores, learns how to wear high heels instead of ballet flats, and read the new paper every day. Her phone case is a classic one, and learns to drink wine, hiding the bitterness under a neutral expression.

It's really lonely, because all of the girls think that she doesn't have anything in common with them.

And she does. She totally reads John Green, it's not all Austen, and she watches  _Teen Wolf_ , and TV but she doesn't talk about it.

Because…if she did, she's just like them.

But she's not because Annie Cresta is almost fifteen years old, and has been dating Finnick Odair for two years, and she is in love.

(Because at almost fifteen love is just ily3 on Facebook and it means forever)

* * *

On Finnick Odair's sixteenth birthday, he pretends to lose his virginity to his girlfriend.

He lost it when he was fifteen to Cashmere Roberts in the back seat of her car.

(He whispers to Annie,  _I love you_.

The look on her face breaks his heart, because she believes it and she truly is in love with him.

It's hard to be The Golden Boy with Annie, he just wants to tell her everything.)

* * *

In grade ten, in AP English, Annie Cresta hears about a cancelled swim practise on Wednesday afternoon, when Finnick Odair slept with some girl.

It's not true.

She asked him herself.

It's not.

(Happily Ever After is a really good lie.

And Annie always loves a happy ending)

* * *

So, a real relationship is work and compromise. That's what Annie tells herself, and maybe they only eat at restaurants Finnick wants, but they also only watch movies Annie likes, so it breaks even.

And Finnick has a car.

He's the only eleventh grade to have his own car. Everyone else has to borrow their parents.

So it's not a fairy tale, but it's real.

And that's so much more important.

* * *

It's almost their three year anniversary, but there is also a swim meet, and Finnick has won State two years in a row, so Annie convinces her parents to let her fly all the way to Boston to surprise him.

(It's a very big deal, she bought really fancy underwear at Victoria's Secret that she's kept hidden in a bag from Garage, even though she doesn't shop there, because even though they're letting go out, they don't think they're having sex. She said she was going to sleep in her friend Becca's room.)

When she gets to the hotel, Finnick opens the door and she sees some random girl naked in his bed.

She wants to cry.

But that's what every other girl would do, when they find out that their boyfriend is sleeping with some slut-(no don't say slut, slut is rude. Don't condemn other girls' sexual choices just because you don't agree with them) on their anniversary.

'Happy Anniversary.' She says, and she strolls in to the room, letting her trench coat fall on the arm of the chair, giving the girl who is scrambaling to get dressed, saying appologizies in a high pitched frantic way, the iciest once over.

Finnick apologizes.

She forgives him, this is love.

(He really is sorry. Annie is a sweet girl, and maybe he should end it because he is The Golden Boy and he doesn't need a girlfriend, but he doesn't really know how he'd feel if Annie was dating someone else.)

* * *

Grade Twelve comes, and he is student body president, and captain of the swim team. He and Annie are going strong, and that incident on their anniversary has taught him discretion.

She hasn't walked in on him with any other girl ever since.

He pays her more attention, and there isn't anyone who doubts that Annie Cresta is in love with Finnick Odair.

(He sometimes thinks, when she's asleep on the hood of his car on the beach and he's playing with her hair, that he could get use to this. Her and him, and just the water.

But the thing is, the plan has to still happen. He has to get to law school.

Because lawyers are the ones who run the world.

And he never wants to feel threaten by a beer bottle at his head again.)

He gets into pre-law at Brown, on a full athletic scholarship.

After prom, he breaks up with Annie Cresta, just a week shy from their four year anniversary.

He's remade himself, and now it's done.

He doesn't need her anymore.

(He always was a good liar.)

* * *

At seventeen Annie Cresta gives up ballet, because it's not a suitable career.

Her nails are always in a French manicure, after she bought this horrible clear nail polish that tastes bitter when you accidentally bite it.

Her heels are no less than three inches high, and she always wears a dress and pearls.

She looks through people, instead of at them, because looking at people means that she's no different from anyone else, and while Finnick Odair is special, Annie Cresta isn't really.

She weight ninety-seven pounds and runs three miles every morning. She doesn't eat meat, and she drinks chai tea, and coffee black.

She does yoga, and is reading  _War and Peace_  because even though she's not Finnick Odair's girlfriend anymore, she's still Annie Cresta, and Annie Cresta doesn't read YA books.

She doesn't like Audrey Hepburn anymore, because it's so tiring to be her.

At seventeen Annie Cresta's boyfriend breaks up with her, and she thinks maybe it wasn't true love.

* * *

At Brown, no one cares about who he was in high school, and his good looks don't help him.

He has to work hard to stand out, harder than ever.

There is barely time to date around, and the girls at Brown want relationships not sex, and he doesn't want one of those.

(Annie is a sour taste in his mouth, and he forgot that routine is hard to break. He gets coffee every morning and orders a latte for a girl whose not there anymore.)

It's really lonely.

* * *

Annie gets into Columbia for biochem, and her roommate is named Johanna Mason.

Johanna says whatever she wants, and she gets Annie drunk off tequila shots and Annie tells her everything about high school.

Johanna doesn't say anything for a long time; but when she does she tells Annie if she knows who she is without Finnick Odair.

The funny thing is, she doesn't know the answer.

She doesn't know who Annie Cresta is if she's not Finnick Odair.

And isn't that sad?

Spend all this time and effort in being Annie Cresta, Finnick Odair's girlfriend that she doesn't know if Annie Cresta, just the girl is someone worth being around.

All of her friends in senior year stopped really talking to her, because Finnick broke up with her.

So…guess Annie Cresta isn't worth much without Finnick Odair.

She's laughing, because it's so damn funny, that she doesn't even notice that she's crying.

* * *

When Finnick Odair gets his midterm scores back, he's subpar and failing one course.

He doesn't know what to do.

* * *

Over the course of the next year, Annie realizes she likes museums and dinosaurs are the best thing ever, and she wants to work with them in some capacity.

She wears jeans for the first time, and wears ballet flats instead of heels and feels too short.

She tries sushi and pho and all of the food Finnick never liked, and realizes that Pho at one in the morning with Red Bull, is the best combination, and nineties night is something she'll put off labs for.

Finnick Odair graduates from Brown, in the middle of the pack and knows he does not want to be a lawyer at all.

He doesn't know what to do. This doesn't follow the plan.

(He almost drunk dials Annie several times senior year, because they're not Facebook friends and he's feeling nostalgic, sue him.)

When he comes back to Oak Bluffs, he's two hundred twenty-eight thousand, nine hundred and twenty-eight dollars in debt, with a degree in pre-law and Mags's hospital bills are piling up.

He's not going to peak in high school.

* * *

Annie Cresta gets accepted into University of Chicago paleontology grad program when she graduates on the Dean's List.

Jo moves to England, as she's got a job as a foreign correspondent for CNN.

She cries over Jo leaving.

She didn't cry over Finnick.

* * *

When he dresses himself for his grandmother's funeral, he doesn't know whose looking back at him in the mirror.

This wasn't his future, this wasn't his plan.

But everything went according to plan.

He reinvented himself, from this awkward dreamer kid with the addict mother, to the golden boy in high school who went to an Ivy League school who works at city hall.

He was supposed to be a lawyer, but law bores him.

It's scary.

It's scary, he doesn't know who he is.

(The addict's son? The bullied dreamer? The Golden Boy of MVRHS? Annie's Boyfriend? Pre-law at Brown graduate? So many people to be, but which one is real?

He doesn't know anymore.

That's scarier.)

* * *

He takes the year off, gets a notebook, and takes his car and drives from Oak Bluffs to California, and he just writes.

He writes and writes and writes.

When he gets to California, he goes back home to Niland and sits on the sand at Salt Creek Beach, and he reads what he's written.

(When did Niland become home?

Guess that answers whose real. The addict's boy who was bullied for his day dreams.

How pathetic.)

Some of it is abstract thought, a lot of it reads with mourning and grief. There is repentance there too.

One page of the many notebooks he filled he has written just one sentence.

He decides to stay in Niland, and he sells the house at Oak Bluffs and works at a second hand book store.

There he writes and rewrites, finding logic in his rambling notebooks.

* * *

Annie Cresta moves to England, she's about to start her PhD at Oxford, and she misses Jo and she won't step foot in Oak Bluffs anymore because she's not Finnick Odair's girlfriend anymore, and when Gale Hawthorne, this geology grad student called her his girlfriend for the first time, she had to excuse herself because she was about to have a panic attack.

(She doesn't want to blame Finnick for making her scared of relationships, but the thing is, she doesn't want to be anyone's girlfriend. She doesn't want to lose herself in the identity of Annie Cresta, girlfriend; she did that once, for four years and she's so hyperaware of it.)

When she looks in the mirror, she's one hundred and five pounds; she wears her hair down, and has fancy colours on her nails.

She has perfected the winged eyeliner look, and she wears pearls in her ears, because she likes pearls. It's not around her neck, like a collar claiming her to anyone.

She's not Audrey Hepburn anymore.

She's okay with that.

* * *

Seventeen rejection letters that he has framed on his wall.

It's okay.

He's not trying to prove anything. Not really. He's not selling anything but the truth.

He fucked up.

He could probably dress it up, make Sam a better protagonist, because when Chaff, his boss read it, he told him that Sam is a selfish, narcissistic, unlikeable asshole.

It hurt, but he expected it.

'I know.'

The only two people who come out remotely sympathetic are Sam's grandmother Lynne, who he pushes away and rarely visits once he gets into Harvard, and Stef, the girl who he charmed into falling in love with him, and whom he neglects, cheats on and emotionally abused.

It takes two years, where he works at the book store, and finishes his second novel, one which tells the relationship between an addict and her child, that he gets his eighteenth letter.

It's an acceptance letter.

 _Pyrite Boy_  is getting published.

* * *

Annie has a year left of her PhD, when she meets Thresh.

Soft spoken but firm Thresh is a biologist, and he doesn't hide anything from her.

He respects her opinions and offers his own.

He's steady.

He's comfortable.

And when he asks her to marry him, she says yes.

* * *

_Pyrite Boy_  becomes a best seller. His name is everywhere.

The dedication is simple; it's the one page that made him pause on the beach.

He tries to find her on Facebook, she's long since defriended him-or was it the other way around?

Either way, it takes digging, going back at least ten years back to when he was eighteen, and he finds a picture that's of them both, and the link to her page is still active.

When he clicks it, he sees Annie Cresta is engaged.

Well, fuck.

What now?

(He remembers thinking a long time ago, why he wouldn't break up with her, even though he was cheating on her.

Annie with someone else makes him physically sick, and he breaks the coffee table and all of his plates.)

* * *

Jo is the one who tells her, she hasn't told Thresh about Finnick Odair; he wouldn't be interested in high school boyfriends, no he was more interested in Marvel during undergrad and Gale during her Masters. There was also Cato, and Morph in between those two, and a dalliance with Woof before Thresh but high school; it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of life.

(Only it does, because she's trying so hard not to be Annie Cresta, Finnick Odair's girlfriend, that it's an unconscious force.

Jo pointed it out, when they went for sushi eight times in a week in a half, and she asked why, and Annie answered that Finnick hated it.

She's trying deliberately not to be anything like she was in high school.

But it's been ten years, she should move on.)

And by tell, Annie means Johanna hands her a book with a bunch of newspaper clippings stuffed inside of it, and tells her that the book tour is having an event in London next Tuesday.

When she opens the book, she can't breathe.

* * *

_Sorry Annie-I'm sorry for everything sorry I fucked you up as much as me I'm sorry_

* * *

It's not an apology. Well it is.

In fifty-seven thousand words, it's the story of Sam who was dragged across the country and given the chance to be anyone in the world, because it was a new start. Sam wants to be gold, to be loved, and he tried, and by all accounts he did it.

But there was so much loneliness in Sam's life, peppered with humour and a lot of tears, as Sam is caught in his web of identities, lost and just wanting Stef back, and when he finds out she's cut him out of his life forever, he overdoses like his mother..

She read the book, and when she was done she cried.

She cried over Finnick for the first time since high school.

It was angry tears, because this boy fucked up her, made her nervous of ever being codependant.

And this boy was incredibly lonely and insecure, not knowing if anyone would want to be his friend, and not willing to try.

He was right.

It is all fucked up.

* * *

She goes to the event.

Finnick looks a lot different from what she remembers. Gone is the designer clothes, instead he's wearing jeans and a button down. He sits on the edge of the table, with an Americano in his left hand and the microphone in his right hand.

He makes easy conversation, doing a reading of when Sam and Stef get caught sneaking out of school to grab ice cream.

She remembers that time, how it was barely May and it was chilly but ice cream was a good idea and she pushed him off the dock and he looked so shocked and pulled her in.

His humour is self-deprecating, and still witty.

He talks about pre-law and how he realized he would be telling lies that could hurt people, and he was just tired of hurting people.

When asked if  _Pyrite Boy_  was nonfiction, Finnick laughs and deflects the questions, saying Sam and he aren't the same person, because Sam has reached his catharsis while he's not quite there.

She stays in the back, when everyone gets dismissed.

When the hotel conference room is empty, she approaches him.

* * *

Annie looks different. Her hair is down, long and wavy. She looks warmer.

He almost chokes on his coffee. He wasn't expecting her here.

'Hi.' Annie says.

'Hi.' He says hoarsely. Words come spilling out of his mouth, rambling and erratic, he's not sure if he's telling Annie he's sorry, or if he understands if she never wants to see him again, or congratulating her on her engagement.

'I think I hate you.' Annie says, cutting him off. She says quietly, like she's rather unsure. 'You're not supposed to hate your high school sweetheart, because your first love is supposed to stick with you forever. And it's supposed to good memories.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I know you are.' Annie said, 'But that doesn't change anything.'

'I love you.' He says, and he thinks it's the truest statement he ever told her. He did, there was no reason why he would have stayed with her if he didn't. 'I just-'

'You had a shit way of showing it.'

'I know.'

'Why are you here Finnick?' Annie asks.

'It's a book tour-'

'Why the book?'

'I-'

He doesn't have an answer that she'll be satisfied with.  _I didn't know who I was, so I tried to figure out why,_  won't work on her.

'I want to tell the truth.' He said finally.

'That you love me Finnick?' Annie asks, and he sees tears that are she blinking back, and he remembers the thirteen year old girl who dressed up as Holly Golightly, who danced to Swan Lake and made everything a science experiment.

The thirteen year old who laughed easily, somehow became a sixteen year old who watched what she ate, and never spoke unless she was positive she was right. Who knew her boyfriend who told her he loved was sleeping around, and broke up with her the morning after prom.

And somehow that seventeen year old girl became the woman standing in front of him.

'I did-I do. And I know I know this isn't right and it's not fair and I can't-you're engaged and I just…I just wanted you to know.'

Annie stares.

'I loved you.'

'Past tense?' It comes out before he can stop it, of course past tense; she's engaged. They were only together for almost four years, his longest relationship, but not hers.

(Probably.

There's a ten year gap in the history of Finnick and Annie.

He doesn't know her.

He wants to though.)

'Present.' She says softly, 'But it doesn't matter. We weren't real. We were fiction. I have spent years trying to figure out who I am, when I'm not Finnick Odair's girlfriend. You don't do that for just a high school relationship. But I did.'

'What are you saying?'

'I am in love with a liar.' Annie says. 'And if we ever got back together, you would destroy me.'

'I never meant to hurt you.' He whispers, 'I'm different, I've changed-'

( _I'm lost, I'm lost and I think you can find me,_ he wants to tell her,  _I think you can tell me who I am_.)

Annie doesn't say anything, she turns and walks away.

Finnick Odair is twenty-nine years old, alone in downtown London, and he is watching the one woman he loves walk away.


End file.
